Unstoppable Arsenal

by Jeffery H. Haskell

  “When I was in Las Vegas I—”

  “Tell me,” she talks right over me, “If you’re not romantically involved with Major Force, surely there must be someone who you’re involved with? Perhaps Domino?”

  My brain short circuits and I can’t think of anything to say to that.

  “Surely, with a team as tight as the Diamondbacks, someone is sleeping with someone. I know our audience would love to know.”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” Does this line usually work for her? I can’t imagine anything I would want to talk about less than my love life or anyone else's.

  She blinks several times before sitting up straight. Her eyes narrow and I can’t tell what she thinks she’s trying to do. After a moment she gives herself a little shake and turns to the camera.

  “We’ll be right back after these commercials.”

  She holds a vapid smile for a second then the red light on the camera vanishes and she turns to me, all pretense of civility is gone and she practically snarls.

  “What kind of robot are you? I was told there’s a real person under all that armor? Paulsen? Paulsen?” she screams at the booth above the soundstage.

  There’s a click of an electronic microphone kicking in, “Yes, Ranna?” a man asks with equal parts resignation and boredom.

  “Do we have a backup guest? What about the guy in the green tights? The one with the bird name?” she has gone from glowering to ignoring me. I would be offended if I knew what the hell was going on.

  “No backup guests, this is a major spot for us, no one else has interviewed Arsenal other than her local paper. Make it work, Ranna.”

  “Make it work? She’s a damn robot, Paulsen, how am I supposed to get anything out of her?”

  There’s no response but the woman behind the camera shouts, “thirty seconds.”

  She turns to me in a huff and puts her palms flat down on her desk, “Now listen up, you stupid machine, give me something I can get ratings on.”

  “First,” I reply, “I’m not a frigging robot. Okay? I’m here to talk about Las Vegas or anything else related to the team. Not their love lives or anything personal about them. If you’re not happy with that I can leave right now.” I stand up to emphasize my point. Her eyes narrow to dots as she glares at me.

  I don’t really care. I came here because Cat-7 made me. I can leave just as easy.

  “Sit down,” she orders.

  There is something off about her. Our Faraday cage glowing could be interference from the wireless broadcasts… or something else.

  Now that I think about it, he could be right. Could she be hiding empathic powers? Regardless, it won’t, or shouldn’t, affect me. Hopefully, she’s got her act together now…

  An hour later I’m on the roof of the TV building staring up into the smog-filled sky. I can’t smell the air but I imagine it stinks. The sun is just about to start going down, and like the sun, my mood is plummeting. I can’t help but feel hollow about this. Stupid interview aside, I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

  Artemis has achieved a geosynchronous orbit above the Midwestern united states. I estimate she will be online in the next 24 hours.

  “Thanks, buddy, good to know. Any word from Shai-Hulud?”

  So far, he has identified three bases the enemy has. He has also delivered information about their organization. From what I have pieced together, and based on our new information, I would be 88% certain that the majority of Cat-7’s ‘shadow’ organization we are now calling, ‘The Cabal’, are mind controlled assets.

  That’s sobering.

  “Who on Earth could be powerful enough to control so many people at once?”

  No one alive.

  “You mean Kate’s old headmaster? You think he faked his death?”

  She did indicate the unlikeliness of his murder.

  I mull that over for a second. The roar of a jet taking off at the airport booms over us as I think.

  “Call Kate and…”

  We’re being jammed.

  Roar of a jet? We’re nowhere near—too late.

  The explosion sends me sprawling off the roof of the twenty story TV station. My HUD flashes red over a number of subsystems as I tumble. The g-forces pull against me, my stomach threatens revolt.

  “Kinetic shields, kinetic shields,” I scream.

  The ground comes up fast, I close my eyes bracing for impact. My momentum halts suddenly as my kinetic shields come back online absorbing the energy of the fall. I hit the ground with no more force than a step.

  “What hit us?”

  Unknown. The force of the blast was several thousand pounds.

  A shadow falls over me. A cloud? No, much, much worse. I’ve seen the footage but… Colossal.

  Data suggest you are facing a group of mercs known as ‘Death Dealers’. They sell their powers to the highest bidder.

  Fantastic. I hit the jets full power as a giant foot, at least ten feet long slams into the ground behind me. Concrete shatters like glass, cars flip and alarms ring. I need altitude. The roar of a jet engine fills the air. It wasn’t a plane before, but whatever knocked me off the roof. I dodge hard right as a fireball streaks by. The sensor suite in my optics darkens the glaring blaze showing the man inside.

  “Besides Colossal and Rocketman, who else does the team have?” I turn and fire IP canons full power back the way I came. The energy smashes into Colossal, dissipating off the surface area of his skin. He’s easily sixty feet tall with a black and white spandex-like suit. It stretches and covers him head to toe. Thankfully, he isn’t as fast as a normal sized person, but certainly tougher. He’s between two buildings, using one as a support as he swats at me. The other guy, some kind of human rocket, keeps barreling down on me.

  “Are there more than two?”

  The details of their roster are sketchy at best. Colossal is the most well known for his rampage in Puerto Rico, there are likely three to four members total.

  Awesome. I swerve just in time to avoid Rocketman, again. He can’t bank worth a damn. However, with his body burning the way it is, I can’t exactly pod him. I seriously doubt a pod will have any effect on Colossal either.

  I burn straight up, flip over reversing my course effectively looping up above the big guy so he can’t hit me as I fly behind him.

  “Scan that parked fire truck, anyone in it?”

  Two firefighters.

  I land in front of the truck with a crunch of shattered concrete. The two firefighters in the cab stare at me open-mouthed. I thought people in LA would be used to seeing supers? Epic pumps up the volume on my voice.

  “Get out!”

  They don’t hesitate.

  “Three pods, front, middle, back.”

  I don’t have a lot of time, Rocket is coming around for another strafing run and there may still be two other attackers hiding in the concrete canyons of downtown LA. As we climb I hear my grenade launcher sing its quire of puff puff puff.

  Colossal turns around, managing to carve out enough of the buildings he’s using for balance to create an avalanche of glass and steel. Damn. Where is the SoCal team? This should be all over the news?

  “What’s with the jamming? Any chance we can find the source?”

  Scanning. They have a tight beam directional jammer tracking us. I will try to triangulate as you fly. Don’t get hit.

  “Gee, you think?”

  Rocketman screams by. I spin to avoid him sending a stream of IP cannons after him but he’s too fast for me to follow, the energy just ends up washing against the side of a building. At least in the narrow canyons he can’t turn around with any speed.

  “Any chance Artemis is ready?”

  Negative, while she is in a stable orbit, she has yet to fully deploy her package.

  A glance at the firetruck and she’s still only a few feet off the ground. Just a few more seconds and she’ll be high enough for my plan to work. Seconds I might not get. I bank again, coming around a tall
circular building and I see a man standing on top of it. He has long black hair tied in a ponytail and one of those long beards I see everyone sporting suddenly. Dressed like a logger he holds his hand out at me with his fingers shaped like a gun.

  “Epic—”

  He pretend fires and the world explodes. Flames engulf the suit, master alarms scream, the sheer force blasts me through glass windows and drywall and out the other side. The concrete firewall of the first floor stops me cold. Screams of panic fill the air. As my vision clears I can see the hole we made, thirty feet long and smoking. The buildings fire alarm sounds and water sprays down instantly turning to steam on contact with the suit. If I had been in the MKI— I’d be dead now.

  “Who the hell is that?” I ask. My legs are wobbly but they do the job.

  Hand Cannon. He can project massive pyrotechnic explosions from his forefinger. Based on what hit us I would say an order of magnitude greater than any missile or bomb. While the kinetic shields can absorb the secondary effects, the initial blast hits the armor.

  A glance at my chest and sure enough, a blackened scorch mark covers it dead center as if a bomb went off right in front of me. The suit is tough, but it’s designed to work with the shields.

  “Okay, they want to play rough, no more Ms. Nice Girl. Safeties off.”

  On the HUD the particle beam ready light flicks on. Both power up instantly.

  Kinetic Lance is also at one-hundred percent.

  Thankfully the office I hit was mostly empty; I don’t think anyone was hurt. I trigger my Emdrive and floor it out the whole I made when I entered. Rocketman must have been waiting because he’s on my tail in an instant. Epic fires the Lance as soon as I bracket his blazing form. He jerks up like he hit a wall and careens away in a spiral toward the ground.

  I can’t help but smile.

  “Okay, status on the fire truck?”

  Thirty feet up.

  “Perfect.”

  Staying low to avoid Hand Cannon, I swing back around, dodge a chunk of wall Colossal throws at me and fly between his legs. The fire truck is only sixty feet away, it takes a little less than two seconds to cover that. I line up behind it and trigger the afterburners. The truck probably weighs five tons. Five tons that my ag pods manage to nullify. However, force isn’t calculated using weight, it’s calculated using mass.

  I slam the truck into his back at a hundred miles an hour. The mass of the fire truck is a thousand times greater than I could achieve on my own and the impact crushes bones and pulps flesh. He goes down screaming. The forward pod is destroyed when the cab of the truck explodes in. I let it go to glide gently to the ground.

  Colossal shrieks in pain all the way down. His powers cut off and by the time he’s writing in agony the big man is nothing more than his usual height.

  “Pod him,” I tell Epic.

  Puff.

  Now, that just leaves—

  Fire and noise rains down and I tumble a hundred feet to the ground slamming into concrete and digging a furrow twenty feet long. My HUD flashes an angry red at me as system after system reports failure.

  Kinetic shielding 30%

  Particle Beams—Offline

  IP Cannons—Offline

  Kinetic Lance—Offline

  I manage to roll onto my back with a groan. All the things I’ve invented and this whack job with a stupid name is going to kill me. Real fear runs through my veins. Blood roars in my ears and my brain panics, scrambling for anything to reverse this.

  Propulsion—Offline.

  A shadow falls over me as I try to stand. Hand Cannon falls to the ground a dozen yards away.

  “You’re a tough piece of work, but at the end of the day— you’re only human.”

  He lifts his hand, finger out.

  “Epic…”

  A shadow slices across the sky and a bronze-tipped spear slams into the ground between us. Confusion passes across his face and mine. A spear? He straightens his hand out and ‘pulls the trigger’. Six feet of Spartan god slams the ground between us, shield facing Hand Cannon. The explosion impacts on the surface of the bronze shield. Fire and pressure shunt to the sides as if it hit a wall. Rocks and debris fill the air clouding my vision for a moment.

  When the debris settles, Protector lowers his undamaged shield. He gestures toward the spear. The ancient looking weapon leaps from the ground and flies through the air to smack against his outstretched hand. I’ve only ever seen him one time in person, sitting in the cafeteria at the Portland base. On TV? A hundred times. He is the most well-known superhero in the world. He’s also one of the few who doesn't operate on a team. After all, who could make him? He can go anywhere in the world, he’s nigh-invulnerable, and is so strong his upper limit can’t be measured as there is nothing heavy enough to test it. When I was sixteen he pulled a sinking cruise ship to shore using her anchor.

  “It’s over, Harold,” he says in a deep voice, that resonates even through my armor while pointing his spear at Hand Cannon… Is his name Harold?

  Systems rebooting… thirty seconds to full restoration, Epic informs me.

  “You can’t just come in here and save the day. You don’t get to do that!” Harold raises his hand to fire again. Protector flashes forward faster than Fleet could and slams his round shield into Harold’s chest sending him flying back twenty feet. Before he’s hit the ground Protector is on him. With one punch and Harold collapses.

  Protector stands and looks around for a few seconds, his steely brown eyes scanning for threats.

  Say thank you, Epic prompts on the screen.

  “Right! Uh, thank you sir, Protector, sir.” I stammer. It’s one thing to see him on TV but… he’s amazing!

  “Arsenal, right?” He says in a much softer tone as he walks over to help me up.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. I don’t know why I’m suddenly saying sir. It’s just… he’s the only superhero I ever really paid attention to. He always seemed so incorruptible, so full of hope.

  “You can call me Syd, saying ‘Protector’ every few seconds is a mouthful,” he says with a sly smile. His helmet covers his head but his eyes and mouth are perfectly clear.

  He pulls me up no problem.

  Jamming has died. Authorities are en route. I’ve notified the local DMHA officer along with the US Marshals Service. ETA thirty-seconds.

  “Thank you, Syd, I was about to have my but whooped.”

  “About?” He says with a chuckle.

  “Fine, my butt was whooped.” My arms feel like rubber and if I didn’t have to fly back to Phoenix I could sleep right now. I put my feet together to blast off when he puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “I need to talk to you… somewhere else. Mind if I drive?”

  Drive? I nod. I have no idea what he means but if there is anyone I can trust, it’s the man who just saved my life.

  Flashing red and blue lights arrive freeing us to leave. I have Epic upload the footage to the locals and the US Marshals, that way I don’t have to stick around and answer a million questions. I give Protector—I mean Sydney – the thumbs. I’m ready to go.

  Sydney… such a normal name for a not normal person. It sounds weird calling him that instead of Protector.

  He reaches around my waist and says, “Hold on.” With his free hand, he reaches back and hurls the spear into the sky. I’m not sure what—

  Holy crap! Air rushes by in a roar. Epic doesn’t even have time to tell me how fast we’re moving. I blink and we’re in orbit.

  Orbit!

  Earth, from here is a big, beautiful blue and green gem spinning majestically below us.

  I think the DMHA database is woefully misinformed about his powers. He doesn’t teleport, but he certainly doesn’t fly either.

  I want to say something but my mouth just hangs open. Ever since our fight with the Six I’ve wanted to do this and here we are, in orbit. Sensors pick up the vacuum around us, a slight radioactive emanation from the Van Allen belt, and lots and lots of space. Lots. H
e keeps a firm grip on me otherwise I would be turning to see the moon and beyond.

  We’re holding relatively still as the Earth rotates below us. I know the ISS traverses the Earth several times a day but seeing how fast it spins when were stationary is breathtaking. The East coast goes by, then the Atlantic ocean, I see Spain, then Italy—

  He hurls his spear down, it vanishes in a second, leaving only a red trail from friction as it passes through the atmosphere. The next second we’re right behind it. Air roaring by in a heartbeat and then we hit the ground. I stumble a few feet with my hands out, my inner ear insisting that we’re still moving.

  “Holy crap!”

  “I’m sorry, I forget how disorienting and frightening that—”

  “Are you kidding me? That was frigging awesome!” I shout.

  We are in Greece, Delphi to be exact.

  “I’m glad you like it. After all these years of doing it, I still get a rush. Come, this way.” He marches forward to the old ruins. I’ve never really studied history, not the way I do physics and math. I’ve read a few, mostly American history. I have to admit, I’m partial to history around inventors like Ben Franklin and scientists like Newton.

  However, this temple seems familiar, I think I’ve seen it in a movie or TV show. Crumbling rocks and broken down arches dot the area. What little grass there is has a nice green color. In the distance, I see a modern city with the haze of pollution obscuring the skyline. If it weren’t for that I could almost believe we were back in time.

  GPS location confirmed. This is the Oracle at Delphi. An archaeological site where in ancient times the Greek people would come to consult Pythia, a high priestess of Apollo. A woman gifted with incredible powers of prophecy, or so myth tells us. The site was last used for this purpose in roughly the fourth century AD.

  “Is this where you hang your helmet when you’re not saving armored damsels in distress?”

  “Something like that.”

  Following him is like following a wall of muscle and steel. He’s huge and when he walks I can see the ripples beneath his skin. His breastplate, leather skirt, and sandals all look like he stepped out of an old movie. He leads me around the back of the ancient ruins that are little more than standing stones and crumbling foundations.